Weeknight Kitchen

Seriously. Addicted. To. This. Corn. It’s next level. There is nothing better than sweet, fresh corn on the cob. Corn is one of my favorite vegetables, up there with potatoes and ketchup! I love smelling the nuttiness of hot corn off the grill on a hot summer day. This corn gets brushed with my jerk-spiced mayo, and then I make it rain toasted coconut! Whoa, I told you, next level!!

On our travels in Bali, Jeremy and I stayed at a little resort that offered great cooking classes. In addition to local curries and rice dishes, the chef taught us this citrusy, simple salad, which has since become a staple at home. The combination of poached shrimp, tart grapefruit, spicy chilies, and fresh mint is bright and clean. Crunchy bean sprouts add terrific texture.

If you have never made a cake before and love chocolate, this is the cake that you should bake. Because it is an easy cake for a beginning baker, I sometimes refer to it as the world’s easiest chocolate cake—but don’t think that it doesn’t deliver in the flavor department! The results are spectacular. Plus, this is the cake that I always make for a crowd, as you can cut it into as many as 48 pieces. In this variation on a Texas sheet cake, I’ve loaded both the cake and the icing with ground cinnamon, giving it a distinctive Tex-Mex flair.

I describe chimichurri sauce as “parsley pesto” to people who have never had it before. I prefer using curly parsley over flat-leaf for its fresh grassy-green flavor. Flat leaf tastes a little like cilantro to me and is less versatile.

Treat yourself to these spicy, mini burgers. Little hands will love mashing and stirring the slider mix! Load with Sweetcorn salsa and pickled gherkins.

Spatchcocking chicken, also called butterflying, calls for cutting the bird along its backbone, then opening it up so that it can lie flat in the pan. Spatchcocked chickens cook quickly and evenly, turning gorgeously brown in the process. You can ask your butcher to spatchcock the chicken for you, but it’s not a hard thing to do yourself (see instructions below). Good, sharp poultry shears are all you need.

Whenever it’s served, a scalloped potato gratin is usually the best thing on the table. With tender potatoes suffused with cream and herbs, and a burnished lid of melted, buttery cheese, there are few things more delicious. That’s why I think you should make potato gratin the centerpiece of your meal, rather than as a side dish to a juicy steak or a roast chicken. Or, if you really want both meat and potatoes, why not mix things up and make the steak the side dish to the gratin?

Using a vanilla bean makes this creamy pudding extra special and aromatic. But if you don’t have one on hand, just stir 1 tablespoon vanilla extract into the pudding along with the egg yolks. Although rice pudding is traditionally served cold, I also like this when it’s still warm and a little runny, poured over sliced strawberries and raspberries, which add both juiciness and acidity.

A fried, breaded chicken cutlet is a wonderful thing—crunchy, golden, juicy within. Universally adored even when served simple and plain, they also take well to embellishment. This slightly fancier version is scented with cumin and citrus, and served with a sweet-tart cranberry chutney spiked with a little jalapeño. If you’re pressed for time, skip the cranberry-kumquat chutney and serve this with a spoonful of mango chutney, or a dollop of lingonberry jam if you’ve got some in the fridge from a recent IKEA excursion (that’s where I always stock up). You’re just looking to add something tangy-sweet to the plate to offset the richness of the fried cutlet.